Offering a foreigner's view on Korean TV and movies

Innkeeper: God of Trade 2015 – 2/3-time Comments

With the recent news of an extension/reduction of the episode count, I’m kinda glad I procrastinated writing this, because it’s really a 2/3-time comments post now. I get why the ratings isn’t as good as hoped, as Show is pretty slow-paced and there’s alot of recycling of the usual drama troupes.

It’s been some time since I last watched a drama where characters seemingly killed off appears back on screen alive and kicking, and here in Show, there’s a handful of them who just reappears when we thought they’re really done for. For example Bong-sam’s (Jang Hyuk) sister So-re (Park Eun Hye), she was trapped in a large wooden box and thrown into the river, surely she drowned and died, yes? But miraculously she was rescued by the owner of Songpa Stable, Jo Sung-joon and sidekick, where again they were thought to have been shot and fell over a cliff. It happened one too many times it’s like the boy crying wolf.

And then we get some frustratingly interesting (or interestingly frustrating, depends on how you look at it) characters, but mostly it gets boring eventually because they just keep repeating their threats/lies/whatever nonsense. The funniest of them all has to be Dog poop/Mae-wol (Kim Min Jung) because she’s so fixated on what her Mom told her when she was buried alive by her horrible father and brother (just because she has psychic powers), that her undesirable powers will be subdued when she meets her destined one. She thinks it is Bong-sam, and she is so hell-bent on making him her man, even though Bong-sam and So-rim (Han Chae Ah) are in love with each other (their love is so doomed).

Dog poop takes on the name of Mae-wol, after she was being nursed back to health by a novice shaman, who claims that Mae-wol is the name given to the next shaman, who supposedly will appear at the temple on her own. So Mae-wol somehow (we’re not shown how) becomes The Shaman trusted by the Joseon court, and she begins using her powers (the political ones, not the psychic ones) to help Bong-sam repeatedly when he runs into troubles with the higher-ups.

The other woman in Bong-sam’s life, So-rim, is your typical damsel-in-distress, usually giving Bong-sam more troubles than not. Of course, it’s not her fault, for she is just a pretty lady who’s being traded by her family in exchange for wealth. She marries Shin Seok-joo, who eventually finds out that Bong-sam was her lover. He lets them spend another night together, in hopes to get an offspring (because Shin is an old man but has no children). But when Shin realises So-rim meets Bong-sam time and again (usually it was a chance meeting), he decides to kill So-rim after she has given birth.

As for Bong-sam’s antagonists, Gil So-gae feels like a toothless tiger because he’s mostly acting on Shin Seok-joo’s orders and his threats and what not feels like a joke. It’s frustrating to see how Bong-sam keeps calling him hyung and being amicable with him despite knowing Gil So-gae being the one who killed his sister So-rae. Is Bong-sam an idiot or what? It seems that Shin is the real villain Bong-sam has to defeat, but he’s nowhere near the amount of wealth Shin has.

I’m staying on this train because I want to see how Bong-sam defeats all odds to be the God of Trade, but it seems like there’s going to be a fair bit of running around in circles, which frankly speaking is frustrating. I doubt the writing style is going to change, so let’s hope I wouldn’t tear out my hair too much in frustration while watching this.

5 thoughts on “Innkeeper: God of Trade 2015 – 2/3-time Comments”

Hi. Thanks for this. I agree with some of your comments but regarding ratings, this drama is doing really well considering that it followed a drama that had 6 points at the most. Gaekju has slowly rised the rating until reaching 13.6 or so once and a current average of 11 points. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if the extension affects it. I can relate to the feelings of frustration but there are aspects of this drama that I really appreciate (Ill probably write about those later, when I get some time) One of those aspects is the complicated relationship between SoGae and Bongsam. Yes, my initial reaction to Bongsam still calling SoGae “hyung” is also that of frustration but I believe Bongsam does not know SoGae literally killed his sister by having men shoot her. He only thinks SoGae provoked the grain ship incident following Kim Bo Yeon’s orders so he makes him indirectly responsible for SoRye’s death. At least that’s what I understood in that scene when Bongsam got drunk and told him “He hates him but is fond of him” However, the way I see it, even if Bongsam saw exactly everything SoGae had done with his own hands, even if he could peek into SoGae’s dark soul hehe, I think a tiny part of him would still have mixed feelings regarding SoGae. Which is sad because we all know SoGae is hopeless.

I think Remember: Son’s War is going to cause a dip in the ratings again. It’s probably bad timing plus the frustrating writing that’s not giving Gaekjoo the ratings it has hoped for.
I get what you mean there regarding Bongsam’s feelings for So Gae, but he does know So Gae had So-rae killed for the first time, so it’s kind of perplexing because Bong Sam was the one who ordered the box holding his sister threw into the river.

The ratings dipped one point since Remember started but I honestly don’t think Gaekjoo had a lot of hope. It did much more than expected with the little promotion it got, the fact that it had no trendy actors or typically popular storyline. Like I said, it followed Assembly which had very low ratings and KBS has not done well the whole year. Therefore, what was the expectation? A miracle? Bongsam blamed himself for So Rye’s first and second death. So Gae claimed he didn’t know it was So Rye that first time and if Bongsam threw her himself, supposedly following “the peddler’s law” (some law @_@) he really isn’t in the position to blame anyone else. It tells you something about their context. It’s hard to accept and barbaric but in “their world” it was apparently the way things were handled. I was told by someone who read the novel this drama is based on, that SoRye’s first death was presented in a more “matter of fact” manner than it was in the drama. I find that kind of disturbing.

I think the first remake of Gaekjoo was pretty well received back then, so I supposed there was some expectations.
Yeah, the Joseon traders’ laws were pretty harsh. I think it’s precisely because of Bong Sam’s stubbornness to adhere to the rules like his father did, and his optimism he succeeded in the end? But that just makes some really frustrating drama viewing experience.